Question: What was your reaction to President Obama’s speech this week at the United Nations?
Sergey Lavrov: It addressed important issues, and we hope that the stated willingness to cooperate on resolving the problems in the Middle East would help us to find common approaches, which is the key for today’s functioning of the international community. Only common action can resolve issues. No one country can solve problems which are becoming transborder, transnational, common threat and challenges for all of us.

Recent events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders. It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies.
Relations between us have passed through different stages. We stood against each other during the Cold War. But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together. The universal international organisation – the United Nations – was then established to prevent such devastation from ever happening again.

On September 10, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke by phone upon an initiative of the American side. The parties discussed the ongoing situation in Syria.
The Minister and the Secretary agreed to continue contacts including opportunity to hold a personal meeting in the coming days in order to have a substantive discussion on the initiative to put Syrian chemical weapons under international control.

On Sept. 11, Russia Beyond the Headlines, the international media project of Rossiyskaya Gazeta, will debut a new version of its supplement in the Washington Post with a fresh look and feel along with a new name.
After five years of appearing in the Post as Russia Now, the redesigned supplement about Russia will now appear under the project’s corporate name, Russia Beyond the Headlines.

Sergey Lavrov: We used the participation of Foreign Ministers of key-countries in the G20 Summit in St.Petersburg, as well as the fact that UN and Arab League Envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi was part of the delegation of Secretary General Pan Gi Moon to set-up a working lunch where we shared our opinions on the situation in Syria in an informal atmosphere, following-up on yesterday’s conversation between state leaders at dinner.

Moscow’s attention was drawn towards information from Mother Superior of the St. James Monastery (Qara, Syria) Agnes Mariam As-Salib which she shared with correspondents from the channel “Rusiya Al-Yaum”.
It is imperative to listen to the testimonies of real witnesses who are trying to share the truth about the tragic events in this country with the international community from the site of the tragedy and not from abroad via electronic channels.

We closely follow Washington discussions concerning the US scenarios of possible illegal military intervention in Syria’s interior conflict.
We are particularly concerned about the fact that the military facilities ensuring the security of Syrian chemical arsenals among the US possible targets for military strikes.
In this view, we warn the US authorities and their allies against striking at chemical facilities and adjacent territories.
Such actions would mark a new dangerous turn in tragic development of the Syrian crisis.

We noted a lot of varied information aimed at placing responsibility on Damascus for the alleged chemical weapons use in Syria even though the results of the UN investigation have not yet been revealed. Thus, the way is being paved for military action against Damascus. Taking this into consideration we find it appropriate to share the main conclusions of the Russian analysis of samples taken at the site of the usage of chemical agents in the suburbs of Aleppo – Khan-al-Assal.

A number of media have recently quoted the Foreign Minister of Poland Radoslaw Sikorski as saying that the Soviet Union had allegedly contributed to Syria's acquisition of their chemical weapons arsenal and thus Russia must deem itself partly responsible for what had happened.
There is nothing more distant from reality. One should understand that the development of Syria's chemical industry in the 1970-1980 was more contributed by Western supplies of technology and precursors, including those of double use, than by the Soviet Union.

On September 4, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia Sergey Lavrov had a phone conversation with Special Envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi on Special Envoy’s request.
They discussed the situation around Syria in the context of a possible U.S. military action.
Lavrov pointed out the unacceptability of the use of force against a sovereign state, bypassing the UN Security Council, which is a gross violation of international law.

This year 9 special flights of the Russian EMERCOM YAK-42, IL-62 and IL-76 have been carried out. They delivered to Syria more than 115 tons of humanitarian aid and brought out 626 people who wanted to leave the armed conflict zone.

Good afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen,
We decided to invite you today beyond our scheduled meetings, because you certainly have many questions regarding the events in Syria and around it. To that end, I would like to say some introductory words.

Question: How can you comment on the situation around the extradition of the Russian citizen Alexander Panin from the Dominican Republic to the United States?

On July 28 the Russian Embassy to the U.S. participated in the Global Tiger Day at the National Zoological Park in Washington DC.
Zoo guests were introduced to the Amur tigers and to conservation programs in Russia aimed to increase their population (there are only 500 of them left).

On July 12, the U.S. Department of State published a report On Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control, Non-proliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments for 2012, which provides evaluations of respect of contractual commitments by other states.
Like in the previous years, the United States continue to beg the question that Russia allegedly continues to violate its commitments under some international treaties.

On May 20 Embassy of the Russian Federation to the US and "The Eurasia Center" (www.eurasiacenter.org) co-hosted in Washington DC the 1st "Doing business with the BRICS" Conference. Brazil, India, China and South Africa Embassies, US Administration, private companies, diplomatic corps and expert community representatives took part in it.

In order to ensure a more effective protection of human rights and interests of Russian children in U.S. foster families, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation and Russian foreign missions in the U.S. invite all adopted compatriots, along with their adoptive parents to contact the Russian consular posts for verification of personal data and consular registration.